Meditation did not clearly outperform education on artery-wall thickness
In Black women with cardiovascular disease or high risk, meditation and health education both showed reduced artery-wall thickness. Their difference was nonsignificant, although some metabolic measures favored meditation.
Based on the published abstract. The full paper may contain additional methods, results and limitations.
The 30-second takeaway
For Black women with cardiovascular disease or high risk, meditation did not show a significant advantage over health education in artery-wall thickness or blood pressure after a year. Some blood-sugar and cholesterol measures favored meditation. These mixed results concern risk markers and do not establish that meditation prevented heart attacks, strokes or other cardiovascular events.
The comparison with historical controls was exploratory and conducted after the main analysis. The abstract does not supply effect sizes for most outcomes, and its weight-loss result applies only to participants with overweight or obesity.
What researchers found
Carotid artery-wall thickness
Transcendental Meditation versus health education after 12 months. The abstract reports no between-group effect estimate or confidence interval.
Other markers differed
Meditation showed favorable differences in a blood-sugar marker, insulin resistance, meaning reduced responsiveness to insulin, and HDL cholesterol. The abstract does not quantify these changes, so statistical significance alone cannot show their practical importance.
Historical comparisons need care
An additional analysis compared both groups with historical controls, meaning a separate earlier comparison group. That exploratory result does not resolve the nonsignificant difference between the randomized groups or establish prevention of cardiovascular events.
The original publication
A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial of Meditation and Health Education in the Prevention of Cardiometabolic Disease in Black Women.
Gaylord-King C, Harris CL, Xu S et al.
J Womens Health (Larchmt) · 2025
- PubMed ID
- 40759176
- Record checked
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